


Lest We Forget

by IvyPane



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memory Alteration, Smut, im just going with it, self indulgent blathering with a deep meaning maybe probably not, this is badly planned out
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 17:14:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2476022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IvyPane/pseuds/IvyPane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imagine a different angel had gripped Dean tight and raised him from perdition. Imagine a different angel had become his best friend and had suffered through his hardships with him. Imagine a different angel's hand burned into his shoulder and a different angel's wings shielding him from harm, a different angel's eyes watching him from inside a different vessel's skull. Imagine Dean and Castiel had never met.</p><p>Imagine it, and tremble.</p><p>What then?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

All information exists somewhere.

The simplest, oldest forms of it are written down on stone or flat, flimsy sheets of wood. It exists within cumbersome messes of machinery, stored as sound waves on little plastic circles created by humankind, waiting to be unlocked and used by fingers and scanners. Some of it dwells in images; in clumsy drawings and exquisite paintings, at the scenes of crimes and the sunsets of valleys, all trapped within the eyes of moving, breathing beings.

The greatest amounts of information are, of course, in those beings themselves, wherever and whoever they are. Within the thousands of tiny brain cells and nerve endings of the living and dead there are whole galaxies of places and times, glowing and pulsing and aching like the unknown cosmos. They’re pleated together into a thin and fickle vine of things, fraying slightly with every impulse of electricity sent through the straining cords of tangible and intangible thought. These strings play under the fingers of the mind as we remember and forget things, as we hold onto them and discard them as we see fit.

Except, of course, nothing is ever truly discarded. Nightmares dwell in dusty corners, waiting to pounce on us when we lay down our sword. Sad, sweet music rises to the ceiling just when we think we’d at last wiped our last tear away. People that we swear we’d never known make a home in our nervous system, stringing up a hammock for themselves made of cells and sighs.

The fact remains that, no matter how hard you try to erase something, it will never quite go away. You can come as close as you like to decimating the memory of something loved or hated, but, the truth is, the shimmering residue of its particles will stubbornly stick to the threads comprising the inside of your head until the very essence of you rots straight through and collapses inwards under the pressure of the sky. You will always have the world inside your mind, and the world will always have you inside its own, too.

Don’t run from it. This is who we are.


	2. Fracture

When it happened, there was no grand change. The cosmos did not suddenly shift; that would come later, passing before Castiel's very eyes as the world folded in all the wrong places. What there was, however, was a sense of loss; an inane 'wrongness' about the universe, suddenly. It was as if an atom had been unevenly split - neutrons cut from protons, electrons scattering, thrown into space to hurtle through the suspension of whole atoms screaming their condolences at the pieces louder than the usual innate moaning of the wind and sea and stars.

But no one could tell what was wrong now that hadn't been wrong before, so they ignored the quiet terror of the pieces of the universe, just as they always did. The change was thus far so imperceptible that only Castiel himself and this strange other angel knew of it. Perhaps God would have known too, had they bothered to look. But they didn't.

If Dean felt the ever-greater scoop of hollowness within him gape wider, he ignored it too. This increase of nothingness, if such a thing can be said to exist, did not alarm or worry him any more than we would worry about the shedding of dead skin cells. He was used to it, and that, more than the severing, made Castiel break. Or perhaps that's simply what he told himself.

The cut was, after all, still painful for him.

Maybe it was because he knew it was happening; because he could feel the reality of his and Dean's times together evaporate all at once, split off into a different universe where he hadn't made this choice. Maybe it was because he was so fiercely concentrating on Dean, fearing the angel wouldn't keep their promise, petrified he'd forget the hunter just as Dean himself was now forgetting, unlearning Castiel's existence. Maybe it was just because he still had a tiny lick of grace in him, no matter how residual and useless and fading fast.

No matter what it was, it was a surreal, transcendent sort of pain.

He doubled over, tried to straighten up; crumpled onto his hands and knees instead. He'd had daggers in his stomach before – he'd had daggers in almost every inch of his skin – but this, this wasn't like daggers. This was impossible, scalding heat. A purging. A cleansing. A burning.

His eyes watered, not so much with tears as with the sweat building on his brow from the inferno; running into his eyes, burning them as if with acid. He drew a choke of a breath, blistering his throat with the fire that he felt surrounding him. There was, of course, no fire at all; just the heat, and the other angel, and the feeling of the fracture deep within him. Castiel had always been a little unsure of where exactly the human soul resided, but now he felt it in himself, deep in that indescribable place that is simultaneously your stomach and heart and head all at once.

He heard what he thought was a physical snap; a rib, an alabaster arrow aiming for his lung. Then, a thousand more snaps, smaller, like the pellets of a toy gun hitting concrete over and over again. He felt his heart stunt. He felt powerless. He felt, he felt... Wet tears. On his cheeks, that... He was suddenly, nonsensically sure should have vaporised instantly, he felt...

He felt darkness. That was all. Nothing. And, through that nothingness, he felt distantly glad; a firefly struggling through the night.

* * *

 Castiel woke up, not like a drowning man coming up for air, but like a dead man digging out of his grave.

His breaths, necessary for such a useless life, rushed in and out of him like badly choreographed dancers, tripping and skidding against the stuffy, solid air. His sight blurred, then focused again as he squinted through eyes that swivelled gratingly in his skull, dead and tarnished. The curtains were drawn. The lights were off. The smoke of a hundred cigarettes lingered in the wallpaper.

He was in a motel, and everything was Dean. Some things were Sam, of course, but where there was Sam there was always Dean anyway, inextricable from each other like this room and the smell of tobacco. It was mockery. The other angel was laughing at him from the walls, the floor, the ceiling; watching from the air vents and behind the curtains, slipping through the air inside Castiel's lungs. The universe was against Castiel, and he was against himself, too.

The absence of the Winchesters, for all its non-existence, was, all at once, overwhelming, and he almost covered his face with his hands like a scared child. He didn't know how he stopped himself, but he did, and the effort of it moulded his mouth into a long, thin line through the clay of his grey skin.

Castiel – Cas, a human with no friends left on this great blue planet – closed his eyes again.

**Author's Note:**

> So this fic has been eating a hole in my head for about a year now and yet I've written, what, about 2,000 words? Haha I suck 
> 
> Either way, I'm planning for it to be pretty long (if I find the time and the courage to make it that), but I'm only vaguely sure where it's going. Also I haven't attempted a long fic since the fiasco of my first ever one (don't even look at me) soo... This is weirdly tough to post. I guess we'll see how it goes!
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy the pseudo-poetic bullshittery that will hopefully ensue henceforth. At least I'm safe in the knowledge that this will be pretty fun to write. Thanks for reading!


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